Hong Kong is one of the most dazzling cities on the planet, a place where the impossible seems everyday. Skyscrapers climbing up slopes of subtropical jungle; a harbour criss-crossed by century-old ferries in front of one of the most famous skylines in the world; open-air escalators running up the mountain; temples full of incense smoke in the shadow of glass towers; noisy night markets next to luxury boutiques. For more than a century and a half it was the point where China and the British Empire met, and out of that friction came an identity of its own, mixed and dizzying, unlike anywhere else.
It is a city of extreme contrasts and endless energy, but it also surprises with its nature: more than three quarters of its territory is actually countryside, hills and parks, with trails, beaches and islands a stone's throw from the centre. You can have dim sum for breakfast in a bustling hall, ride up to Victoria Peak to see the city at your feet, cross the harbour on the Star Ferry for the price of a coin, get lost in the markets of Kowloon and end up in front of the giant Big Buddha on Lantau Island, all in just a few days and with public transport that runs like clockwork.
This guide covers the best of Hong Kong with a practical eye: what to see across the island, Kowloon and Lantau, how to use the Octopus card and the excellent transport, how to move between the Chinese and British heritage, what you need to know about its status as a Special Administrative Region (with its own border and currency) and how to take advantage of the fact that the internet is open here. It is one of the easiest and most fascinating gateways to Asia, and a perfect contrast with the cities of inland China.
Hong Kong was a collection of fishing and farming villages in southern China when, after the First Opium War, Britain took Hong Kong Island in 1842, added the Kowloon peninsula in 1860 and the New Territories on a 99-year lease in 1898. Under British administration, the natural free port grew into a major commercial and financial centre of Asia, and also a refuge for waves of migrants fleeing the upheavals of mainland China (revolutions, wars, Maoism). After the Japanese occupation in the Second World War, Hong Kong bounced back strongly and in the second half of the 20th century became one of the 'Asian tigers', a global financial powerhouse. As the end of the New Territories lease approached, the United Kingdom and China agreed to hand over the whole colony: in 1997 Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty as a Special Administrative Region, under the principle of 'one country, two systems', which guarantees its autonomy, currency and legal system for fifty years. The full story, from fishing villages to British colony to today's SAR, is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Cantonese and karst south: the trading gateway of Canton, colonial Hong Kong and its return, the peaks of the Li River at Guilin and the stone pillars of Zhangjiajie.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before it became one of the world's great cities, the territory of Hong Kong was a remote corner of southern China: a cluster of mountainous islands and peninsulas on the Guangdong coast, with sheltered natural harbours, home for thousands of years to fishing and farming communities. Archaeological finds show human presence since the Neolithic, and under the Chinese dynasties the area became part of the empire, though always as a remote place governed by the provincial administration of the south.
For centuries, life revolved around the sea and the land: fishing, rice growing in the valleys, salt production (a valuable resource controlled by the state) and agarwood incense, which according to one theory gave the place its name (Hong Kong, 'fragrant harbour', after the trade in that aromatic wood shipped from its ports). People lived in clans and walled villages, some of which still survive in the New Territories, and in floating villages of boat-dwelling communities such as the Tanka. The waters, full of islands and inlets, were also a hideout for pirates.
That quiet, out-of-the-way world began to change when, from the 16th century, European ships started visiting the coasts of southern China in search of trade. The Portuguese settled nearby, in Macau, and the great port of Canton, upriver, became the hub of trade with the West. Hong Kong, with its magnificent deep-water natural harbour, sat at the gateway to that traffic, waiting for the moment history would push it into the spotlight. That moment came, in the worst possible way, with opium.
Hong Kong's birth as a British enclave is inseparable from one of the murkiest chapters of colonial history: the opium trade. In the early 19th century, British merchants were shipping huge quantities of Indian-grown opium into China to balance their enormous purchases of tea and silk, causing an addiction crisis and a drain of silver that alarmed the imperial government. When China tried to stop the trade, the First Opium War (1839-1842) broke out, pitting British military power against a declining Qing empire, and it ended in a humiliating defeat for China.
Under the Treaty of Nanking of 1842, China ceded the island of Hong Kong, then sparsely populated, to Britain in perpetuity, and the British immediately made it a colony and free port. Expansion followed in two more stages: after the Second Opium War, in 1860, China also ceded the Kowloon peninsula, across from the island; and in 1898, as the powers carved China into spheres of influence, Britain obtained a 99-year lease on the so-called New Territories, the large mainland and island area surrounding Kowloon. That lease, which expired in 1997, would decades later hold the key to the fate of the whole territory.
Under British rule, and thanks to its free port and strategic position, Hong Kong grew quickly as a trading hub between China and the rest of the world. It drew merchants, bankers and, above all, waves of Chinese migrants looking for work or fleeing upheaval on the mainland. A distinctive colonial society took shape, with a ruling European minority and a working Chinese majority, divided by social barriers but bound together in an increasingly prosperous and cosmopolitan port city.
The 20th century put Hong Kong to the test. During the Second World War, the territory was attacked and occupied by the Japanese army from late 1941 to 1945, hard years of shortages, repression and a falling population. After the war, the colony returned to British hands and went through a decisive transformation: the communist victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949 and the later upheavals of Maoism brought huge waves of refugees across from the mainland, many of them business owners, workers and capital from cities such as Shanghai, who multiplied the population and brought industrial energy.
With that workforce and drive, Hong Kong reinvented itself from the 1950s and 60s as a manufacturing powerhouse (textiles, plastics, electronics) and, later, as a major financial and services centre. It was one of the 'four Asian tigers' whose spectacular economic growth amazed the world. The city filled with skyscrapers, built modern infrastructure and model public transport, and became a crucial bridge between China and the global economy, a role that grew even more important when the mainland began opening up its economy in 1979. Hong Kong prospered, though with huge inequality and scarce, expensive housing that is still one of its biggest problems today.
Meanwhile, an unavoidable date was approaching: 1997, when the New Territories lease expired. Although the island and Kowloon had been ceded in perpetuity, the colony was not viable without the New Territories, so the United Kingdom and China negotiated the future of the whole territory. In 1984, the two countries signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which agreed the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong to China in 1997 under an original formula: 'one country, two systems'.
On 1 July 1997, in a formal ceremony watched around the world, the United Kingdom officially handed sovereignty over Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, ending more than a century and a half of British rule. The British flag was lowered and the flag of the new Hong Kong Special Administrative Region within China was raised. It was a historic moment full of symbolism: the end of a colonial era born of the Opium Wars and the start of a new, unprecedented stage, in which a capitalist economy and a society with Western-style freedoms became part of a socialist state.
Under the Basic Law, its mini-constitution, Hong Kong kept its currency (the Hong Kong dollar), its legal system, its free-port status, its administrative autonomy and its own borders, even with the rest of China: anyone travelling between the mainland and Hong Kong goes through immigration control. The city thus kept a very particular identity, distinct from the mainland's, with Cantonese and English as its languages, a free internet and a way of life of its own. In the following decades, Hong Kong remained one of the great financial centres of Asia and the world, and built ever closer economic ties with a booming mainland, especially with the neighbouring cities of the Pearl River Delta.
The balance between the high degree of autonomy that was promised and growing integration with China has shaped Hong Kong's political life since the handover, with debates and tensions over the pace and scope of that integration that have echoed internationally. It is a sensitive, evolving issue, which travellers notice mostly in the territory's institutional uniqueness (its own currency, border and laws) rather than in day-to-day sightseeing.
Today Hong Kong is a metropolis of more than seven million people and one of the densest, most vertical and most dynamic cities on the planet, a place where Chinese and British heritage live side by side in a unique way. It is still a leading global financial centre, a major port and a transport hub, with one of the world's busiest airports and a high-speed rail link to the mainland. Its economy, built on finance, trade, logistics and services, keeps it among the richest and most expensive cities in Asia, with a constant contrast between the wealth of its towers and the high cost of housing for many of its residents.
For travellers, that double heritage is everywhere: in skyscrapers bearing the names of British banks next to temples full of incense; in the double-decker trams and the Star Ferry inherited from colonial times; in the bilingual signs in Cantonese and English; in the mix of the finest Cantonese cooking with the popular cafés serving 'Hong Kong-style' milk tea. And its nature is a surprise too: a short metro or bus ride takes you from the financial district to green hills, trails, beaches and islands, in a territory that is actually mostly protected countryside.
In short, Hong Kong is like nowhere else: not entirely China and not entirely the West, but a bridge between worlds forged by a unique and often painful history. Taking in its skyline from the Star Ferry at sunset, going up Victoria Peak, getting lost in the markets of Kowloon or finding some calm in front of the Big Buddha on Lantau are experiences that sum up the character of this extraordinary city, one of the great crossroads of Asia.
